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THE CONTEST IN AMERICA

By JOHN STUART MILL

KEPRINTED FROM FRASER'S MAGAZINE

BOSTON
LFTTLE, BROWN AND COMPANY

MDCCCLXII

RIVERSIDE. CAMBRIDGE:
TBI N TED BY H. O. HOUGHTON

THE CONTEST IN AMERICA.

The cloud which for the space of a month hung"
gloomily over the civilized world, black with far
worse evils than those of simple war, has passed
from over our heads without bursting. The fear
has not been realized, that the only two first-rate
Powers who are also free nations would take to
tearing each other in pieces, both the one and the
other in a bad and odious cause. For while, on the
American side, the war would have been one of reck-
less persistency in wrong, on ours it would have
been a war in alliance with, and, to practical pur-
poses, in defence and propagation of, slavery. We
had, indeed, been Avronged. We had suffered an
indignity, and something more than an indignity,
which, not to have resented, would have been to in-
vite a constant succession of insults and injuries from
the same and from every other quarter. We could
have acted no otherwise than we have done: yet it is
impossible to think, without something like a shudder,
from what we have escaped. We, the emancipators
of the slave — who have wearied every Court and
Government in Europe and America with our pro-

4 THE CONTEST IN AMERICA.

te^ts and remonstrances, until we goaded them into
at least ostensibly cooperating with us to prevent
the enslaving of the negro — we, who for the last
half century have spent annual sums, equal to the
revenue of a small kingdom, in blockading the Afri-
can coast, for a cause in which we not only had no
interest, but which was contrary to our pecuniary
interest, and which many believed would ruin, as
many among us still, though erroneously, believe
that it has ruined, our colonies, — ive should have
lent a hand to setting up, in one of the most com-
manding positions of the world, a powerful repub-
lic, devoted not only to slavery, but to pro-slavery
propagandism — should have helped to give a place
in the community of nations to a conspiracy of
slave-owners, who have broken their connection with
the American Federation on the sole ground, osten-
tatiously proclaimed, that they thought an attempt
would be made to restrain, not slavery itself, but
their purpose of spreading slavery wherever migra-
tion or force could carry it.

A nation which has made the professions that
England has, does not with impunity, under how-
ever great provocation, betake itself to frustratino-
the objects for which it has been calling on the rest
of the world to make sacrifices of what they think
their interest. At present all the nations of Europe
have sympathized with us ; have acknowledo-ed that
we were injured, and declared with rare unanimity,
that we had no choice but to resist, if necessary by

THE CONTEST IN AMERICA. 5

arms. But the consequences of such a war would
soon have buried its causes in oblivion. When the
new Confederate States, made an independent Power
by English help, had begun their crusade to carry
negro slavery from the Potomac to Cape Horn ;
who would then have remembered that England
raised up this scourge to humanity not for the evil's
sake, but because somebody had offered an insult to
her flag? Or even if unforgotten, who w^ould then
have felt that such a grievance was a sufficient pal-
liation of the crime ? Every reader of a newspaper,
to the farthest ends of the earth, would have believed
and remembered one thing only — that at the criti-
cal juncture w4iich was to decide whether slavery
should blaze up afresh with increased vigor or be
trodden out — at the moment of conflict between
the good and the evil spirit — at the dawn of a
hope that the demon might now at last be chained
and flung into the pit, England stepped in, and, for
the sake of cotton, made Satan victorious.

The world has been saved from this calamity, and
England from this disgrace. The accusation would
indeed have been a calumny. But to be able to
defy calumny, a nation, like an individual, must
stand very clear of just reproach in its previous
conduct. Unfortunately, we ourselves have given
too much plausibility to the charge. Not by any-
thing said or done by us as a Government or as a
nation, but by the tone of our press, and in some
degree, it must be owned, the general opinion of

5 THE CONTEST IN AMERICA.

English society. It is too true, that the feelings
which have been manifested since the beginning of
the American contest — the judgments which have
been put forth, and the wishes which have been ex-
pressed concerning the incidents and probable event-
ualities of the struggle — the bitter and irritating
criticism which has been kept up, not even against
both parties equally, but almost solely against the
party in the right, and the ungenerous refusal of all
those just allowances which no country needs more
than our own, whenever its circumstances are as
near to those of America as a cut finger is to an
almost mortal w^ound, — these facts, with minds not
favorably disposed to us, would have gone far to
make the most odious interpretation of the war in
which we have been so nearly engaged with the
United States, appear by many degrees the most
probable. There is no denying that our attitude
towards the contending parties (I mean our moral
attitude, for politically there was no other course
open to us than neutrality) has not been that which
becomes a people who are as sincere enemies of
slavery as the English really are, and have made as
great sacrifices to put an end to it where they could.
And it has been an additional misfortune that some
of our most powerful journals have been for many
years past very unfavorable exponents of English
feeling on all subjects connected with slavery: some,
probably, from the influences, more or less direct,
of West Indian opinions and interests : others from

THE CONTEST IN AMERICA. ^

inbred Toryism, which, even when compelled by
reason to hold opinions favorable to liberty, is al-
ways adverse to it in feeling" ; which likes the spec-
tacle of irresponsible power exercised by one person
over others ; wdiich has no moral repugnance to the
thought of human beings born to the penal servi-
tude for life, to which for the term of a few years
we sentence our most hardened criminals, but keeps
its indignation to be expended on " rabid and fanat-
ical abolitionists " across the Atlantic, and on those
writers in Eiigland who attach a sufficiently serious
meaning to their Christian professions, to consider a
fight against slavery as a fight for God.

Now, when the mind of England, and it may
almost be said, of the civilized part of mankind, has
been relieved from the incubus which had weighed
on it ever since the Trent outrage, and when we are
no longer feeling towards the Northern Americans
as men feel towards those with whom they may be
on the point of struggling for life or death ; now, if
ever, is the time to review our position, and consider
wdiether we have been feeling" what ouo^ht to have
been felt, and wishing what ought to have been
wished, regarding the contest in which the Northern
States are engaged with the South.

In considering this matter, we ought to dismiss
from our minds, as far as possible, those feelings
against the North, which have been engendered not
merely by the Trent aggression, but by the previous
anti-British effusions of newspaper writers and stump

g THE CONTEST IN AMERICA.

orators. It is hardly worth while to ask how far
these explosions of ill-humor are anything* more
than might have been anticipated from ill-disciplined
minds, disappointed of the sympathy which they just-
ly thought they had a right to expect from the great
anti-slavery people, in their really noble enterprise.
It is almost superfluous to remark that a democratic
Government always shows worst where other Gov-
ernments generally show best, on its outside ; that
unreasonable people are much more noisy than the
reasonable ; that the froth and scum are the part of
a violently fermenting liquid that meets the eyes, but
are not its body and substance. Without insisting
on these things, I contend, that all previous cause
of offence should be considered as cancelled, by the
reparation w^hich the American Government has so
amply made ; not so much the reparation itself,
which might have been so made as to leave still
greater cause of permanent resentment behind it ;
but the manner and spirit in which they have made
it. These have been such as most of us, I venture
to say, did not by any means expect. If reparation
were made at all, of which few of us felt more than
a hope, we thought that it would have been made
obviously as a concession to prudence, not to princi-
ple. We thought that there would have been truck-
ling to the newspaper editors and supposed fire-eaters
who were crying out for retaining the prisoners at
all hazards. We expected that the atonement, if
atonement there were, would have been made with

THE CONTEST IN AMERICA. 9

reservations, perhaps under protest. We expected
that the correspondence woukl have been spun out,
and a trial made to induce Eng^land to be satisfied
with less ; or that there would have been a proposal
of arbitration ; or that England would have been
asked to make concessions in return for justice ; or
that if submission was made, it would have been
made, ostensibly, to the opinions and wishes of Con-
tinental Europe. We expected anything, in short,
which would have been weak and timid and paltry.
The only thing which no one seemed to expect, is
what has actually happened. Mr. Lincoln's Gov-
ernment have done none of these things. Like
honest men, they have said in direct terms, that our
demand was right ; that they yielded to it because it
was just ; that if they themselves had received the
same treatment, they would have demanded the same
reparation ; and that if what seemed to be the Ameri-
can side of a question was not the just side, they
would be on the side of justice ; happy as they were
to find after their resolution had been taken, that it
was also the side which America had formerly de-
fended. Is there any one, capable of a moral judg-
ment or feeling, who will say that his opinion of
America and American statesmen, is not raised by
such an act, done on such grounds ] The act itself
may have been imposed by the necessity of the cir-
cumstances ; but the reasons given, the principles of
action professed, were their own choice. Putting
the worst hypothesis possible, which it would be the

IQ THE CONTEST IN AMERICA.

height of injustice to entertain seriously, that the con-
cession was really made solely to convenience, and
that the profession of regard for justice was hypoc-
risy, even so, the ground taken, even if insincerely,
is the most hopeful sign of the moral state of the
American mind which has appeared for many years.
That a sense of justice should he the motive which
the rulers of a country rely on, to reconcile the pub-
lic to an unpopular, and what might seem a humili-
ating act ; that the journalists, the orators, many
lawyers, the Lower House of Congress, and Mr.
Lincoln's own naval secretary, should be told in the
face of the world, by their own Government, that
they have been giving public thanks, presents of
swords, freedom of cities, all manner of heroic hon-
ors to the author of an act which, though not so in-
tended, was lawless and wrong, and for which the
proper remedy is confession and atonement ; that
this should be the accepted policy (supposing it to
be nothing higher) of a Democratic Republic, shows
even unlimited democracy to be a better thing than
many Englishmen have lately been in the habit of
considering it, and goes some way towards proving
that the aberrations even of a ruling multitude are
only fatal when the better instructed have not the
virtue or the courage to front them boldly. Nor
ought it to be forgotten, to the honor of Mr. Lin-
coln's Government, that in doing what was in itself
right, they have done also what was best fitted to
allay the animosity which was daily becoming more

THE CONTEST IN AMERICA. J X

bitter between the two nations so long as the question
remained open. They have put the brand of con-
fessed injustice upon that rankling- and vindictive
resentment with which the profligate and passionate
part of the American press has been threatening us
in the event of concession, and which is to be mani-
fested by some dire revenge, to be taken, as they
pretend, after the nation is extricated from its pres-
ent difficulties. Mr. Lincoln has done what depend-
ed on him to make this spirit expire with the occa-
sion which raised it up ; and we shall have ourselves
chiefly to blame if we keep it alive by the further
prolongation of that stream of vituperative elo-
quence, the source of which, even now, when the
cause of quarrel has been amicably made up, does
not seem to have run dry.^

Let us, then, without reference to these jars, or
to the declamations of newspaper writers on either
side of the Atlantic, examine the American question

1 I do not forget one regrettable passage in Mr. Seward's letter,
in which he said that " if the safety of the Union required the de-
tention of the captured persons, it would be the right and duty of
this Government to detain them." I sincerely grieve to find this
sentence in the dispatch, for the exceptions to the general rules of
morality are not a subject to be lightly or unnecessarily tampered
with. The doctrine in itself is no other than that professed and
acted on by all governments — that self-preservation, in a State,
as in an individual, is a warrant for many things which at all other
times ought to be rigidly abstained from. At all events, no nation
which has ever passed " laws of exception," which ever supended
the Habeas Corpus Act or passed an Alien Bill in dread of a Char-
tist insurrection, has a right to throw the first stone at Mr. Lincoln's
Government.

12 THE CONTEST IN AMERICA.

as it stood from the beginning ; its origin, the pur-
pose of both the combatants, and its various possi-
ble or probable issues.

There is a theory in England, believed perhaps
by some, half believed by many more, which is only
consistent with original ignorance, or complete sub-
sequent forgetfulness, of all the antecedents of the
contest. There are people who tell us that, on the
side of the North, the question is not one of slavery
at all. The North, it seems, have no more objec-
tion to slavery than the South have. Their leaders
never say one word implying disapprobation of it.
They are ready, on the contrary, to give it new
guarantees ; to renounce all that they have been
contending for ; to win back, if opportunity offers,
the South to the Union by surrendering the whole
point.

If this be the true state of the case, what are
the Southern chiefs fighting about I Their apolo-
gists in England say that it is about tariffs, and
similar trumpery. T/ie^ say nothing of the kind.
They tell the world, and they told their own citi-
zens when they wanted their votes, that the object
of the fight was slavery. Many years ago, when
General Jackson was President, South Carolina did
nearly rebel (she never was near separating) about
a tariff ; but no other State abetted her, and a strong
adverse demonstration from Virginia brought the
matter to a close. Yet the tariff of that day was
rigidly protective. Compared with that, the one in

THE CONTEST IN AMERICA. 13

force at the time of the secession was a free-trade
tariff. This latter was the result of several succes-
sive modifications in the direction of freedom ; and
its principle was not protection for protection, but
as much of it only as might incidentally result
from duties imposed for revenue. Even the Morrill
tariff (which never could have been passed but for
the Southern secession) is stated by the high au-
thoiity of Mr. H. C. Carey to be considerably more
liberal than the reformed French tariff under Mr.
Cobden's treaty ; insomuch that he, a Protectionist,
would be glad to exchange his own protective tariff
for Louis Napoleon's free-trade one. But why dis-
cuss, on probable evidence, notorious facts ^ The
world knows what the question between the North
and South has been for many years, and still is.
Slavery alone was thought of, alone talked of. Sla-
very was battled for and against, on the floor of
Congress and in the plains of Kansas ; on the sla-
very question exclusively was the party constituted
which now rules the United States : on slavery Fre-
mont was rejected, on slavery Lincoln was elected ;
the South separated on slavery, and proclaimed sla-
very as the one cause of separation.

It is true enough that the North are not carrying
on war to abolish slavery in the States where it legal-
ly exists. Could it have been expected, or even per-
haps desired, that they should ] A great party does
not change suddenly, and at once, all its principles
and professions. The Republican party have taken

I4f THE CONTEST IN AMERICA.

their stand on law, and the existing constitution of
the Union. They have disclaimed all right to at-
tempt anything which that constitution forbids. It
does forbid interference by the Federal Congress
with slavery in the Slave States ; but it does not
forbid their abolishing it in the District of Colum-
bia ; and this they are now doing, having voted, I
perceive, in their present pecuniary straits, a million
of dollars to indemnify the slave-owners of the
District. Neither did the Constitution, in their own
opinion, require them to permit the introduction of
slavery into the territories which were not yet States.
^To prevent this, the Republican party was formed,
and to prevent it, they are now fighting, as the
slave-owners are fighting to enforce it.

The present government of the United States is
not an Abolitionist government. Abolitionists, in
America, mean those who do not keep within the
constitution ; who demand the destruction (as far
as slavery is concerned) of as much of it as pro-
tects the internal legislation of each State from the
control of Congress; who aim at abolishing slavery
wherever it exists, by force if need be, but certainly
by some other power than the constituted authorities
of the Slave States. The Republican party neither
aim nor profess to aim at this object. And when
we consider the flood of wrath which would have
been poured out against them if they did, by the
very writers who now taunt them with not doing
it, we shall be apt to think the taunt a little mis-

THE CONTEST IN AMERICA. J 5

placed. But though not an Abohtionist party, they
are a Free-soil party. If they have not taken arms
against slavery, they have against its extension.
And they know, as we may know if we please, that
this amounts to the same thing. The day when
slavery can no longer extend itself, is the day of its
doom. The slave-owners know this, and it is the
cause of their fury. They know, as all know who
have attended to the subject, that confinement within
existing limits is its death-warrant. Slavery, under
the conditions in which it exists in the States, ex-
hausts even the beneficent powers of nature. So
incompatible is it with any kind whatever of skilled
labor, that it causes the whole productive resources
of the country to be concentrated on one or two
products, cotton being the chief, which require, to
raise and prepare them for the market, little besides
brute animal force. The cotton cultivation, in the
opinion of all competent judges, alone saves North
American slavery ; but cotton cultivation, exclu-
sively adhered to, exhausts in a moderate number
of years all the soils which are fit for it, and can
only be kept up by travelling farther and farther
westward. Mr. Olmsted has given a vivid de-
scription of the desolate state of parts of Georgia
and the Carolinas, once among the richest specimens
of soil and cultivation in the world; and even the
more recently colonized Alabama, as he shows, is
rapidly following in the same downhill track. To
slavery, therefore, it is a matter of life and death to

16 THE CONTEST IN AMERICA.

find fresh fields for the employment of slave labor.
Confine it to the present States, and the owners of
slave property will either be speedily ruined, or will
have to find means of reforming" and renovating
their agricultural system; which cannot be done
without treating the slaves like human beings, nor
without so large an employment of skilled, that is,
of free labor, as will widely displace the unskilled,
and so depreciate the pecuniary value of the slave,
that the immediate mitigation and ultimate extinction
of slavery would be a nearly inevitable and probably
rapid consequence.

The Republican leaders do not talk to the pub-
lic of these almost certain results of success in the
present conflict. They talk but little, in the existing
emergency, even of the original cause of quarrel.
The most ordinary policy teaches them to inscribe
on their banner that part only of their known prin-
ciples in which their supporters are unanimous.
The preservation of the Union is an object about
which the North are agreed ; and it has many ad-
herents, as they believe, in the South generally.
That nearly half the population of the Border
Slave States are in favor of it is a patent fact,
since they are now fighting in its defence. It is
not probable that they would be willing to fight
directly against slavery. The Republicans well
know that if they can reestablish the Union, they
gain everything for which they originally contend-
ed ; and it would be a plain breach of faith with

THE CONTEST IN AMERICA. in

the Southern friends of the Government, if, after
rallying them round its standard for a purpose of
which they approve, it were suddenly to alter its
terms of conjmunion without their consent.

But the parties in a protracted civil war almost
invariahly end by taking more extreme, not to say
higher grounds of principle, than they began with.
Middle parties and friends of compromise are soon
left behind ; and if the writers who so severely
criticize the present moderation of the Free-soilers
are desirous to see the war become an abolition
war, it is probable that if the war lasts long enough
they will be gratified. Without the smallest pre-
tension to see further into futurity than other peo-
ple, I at least have foreseen and foretold from the
tirst, that if the South were not promptly put
down, the contest would become distinctly an anti-
slavery one ; nor do I believe that any person, ac-
customed to reflect on the course of hunian aflairs
in troubled times, can expect anything else. Those
who have read, even cursorily, the most valuable
testimony to which the English public have access,
concerning the real state of aflairs in America —
the letters of the Tmes' correspondent, Mr. Rus-
sell— must have observed how early and rapidly
he arrived at the same conclusion, and with what
increasing emphasis he now continually reiterates
it. In one of his recent letters he names the end
of next sunmier as the period by which, if the
2

|g THE CONTEST IN AMERICA.

war has not sooner terminated, it will have assumed
a complete anti-slavery character. So early a term
exceeds, I confess, my most sanguine hopes ; but
if Mr. Russell be right. Heaven forbid that the
war should cease sooner; for if it lasts till then, it
is quite possible that it will regenerate the Amer-
ican people.

If, however, the purposes of the North may
be doubted or misunderstood, there is at least no
question as to those of the South. They make
no concealment of tJieir principles. As long
as they were allowed to direct all the policy of
the Union ; to break through compromise after
compromise, encroach step after step, until they
reached the pitch of claiming a right to carry
slave property into the Free States, and, in op-
position to the laws of those States, hold it as
property there ; so long, they were willing to re-
main in the Union. The moment a President
was elected of whom it was inferred from his
opinions, not that he would take any measures
against slavery where it exists, but that he would
oppose its establishment where it exists not, — that
moment they broke loose from what was, at least,
a very solemn contract, and formed themselves
into a Confederation professing as its fundamental
principle not merely the perpetuation, but the in-
definite extension of slavery. And the doctrine is
loudly preached through the new Republic, that

THE COMEST IN AMERICA. ig

slavery, whether black or white, is a good in itself,
and the proper condition of the working classes
everywhere.

Let me, in a few words, remind the reader what
sort of a thing this is, which the white oligarchy
of the South have banded themselves together to
propagate and establish, if they could, universally.
When it is wished to describe any portion of the
human race as in the lowest state of debasement,
and under the most cruel oppression, in which it
is possible for human beings to live, they are com-
pared to slaves. When words are sought by which
to stigmatize the most odious despotism, exercised
in the most odious manner, and all other compari-
sons are found inadequate, the despots are said to
be like slave-masters, or slave-drivers. What, by
a rhetorical license, the worst oppressors of the
human race, by way of stamping on them the
most hateful character possible, are said to be,
these men, in very truth, are. I do not mean
that all of them are hateful personally, any more
than all the Inquisitors, or all the buccaneers. But
the position which they occupy, and the abstract
excellence of which they are in arms to vindicate,
is that which the united voice of mankind habitu-
ally selects as the type of all hateful qualities. I
will not bandy chicanery about the more or less
of stripes or other torments which are daily requi-
site to keep the machine in working order, nor
discuss whether the Legrees or the St. Clairs are

20 THE CONTEST IN AMERICA.

more numerous among the slave-owners of the
Southern States. The broad facts of the case suf-
fice. One fact is enough. There are, Heaven
knows, vicious and tyrannical institutions in ample
abundance on the earth. But this institution is
the only one of them all which requires, to keep
it going, that human beings should be burnt alive.
The calm and dispassionate Mr. Olmsted affirms
that there has not been a single year, for many
years past, in which this horror is not known to
have been perpetrated in some part or other of
the South. And not upon negroes only ; the Ud-
inhu7'gh Revieiv^ in a recent number, gave the
hideous details of the burning alive of an unfor-
tunate Northern huckster by Lynch law, on mere
suspicion of having aided in the escape of a slave.
What must American slavery be, if deeds like
these are necessary under it ] — and if they are
not necessary and are yet done, is not the evidence
against slavery still more damning ] The South
are in rebellion not for simple slavery ; they are
in rebellion for the right of burning human crea-
tures alive.

But w^e are told, by a strange misapplication of
a true principle, that the South had a right to
separate ; that their separation ought to have been
consented to, the moment they showed themselves
ready to fight for it ; and that the North, in re-
sisting it, are committing the same error and
wrong which England committed in opposing the

THE CONTEST IN AMERICA. gj

original separation of the thirteen colonies. This
is carrying' the doctrine of the sacred right of in-
surrection rather far. It is wonderful how easy
and liberal and complying people can be in other
people's concerns. Because they are willing to
surrender their own past, and have no objection to
join in reprobation of their great-grandfathers,
they never put themselves the question what they
themselves would do in circumstances far less try-
ing, under far less pressure of real national calamity.
Would those who profess these ardent revolution-
ary principles consent to their being applied to
Ireland, or India, or the Ionian Islands ? How
have they treated those who did attempt so to ap-
ply them ? But the case can dispense with any
mere argumentiim ad liominem, I am not fright-
ened at the word rebellion. I do not scruple to
say that I have sympathized more or less ardently
with most of the rebellions, successful and unsuc-
cessful, which have taken place in my time. But I
certainly never conceived that there was a sufficient
title to my sympathy in the mere fact of being a
rebel ; that the act of taking arms against one's
fellow-citizens was so meritorious in itself, was so
completely its own justification, that no question
need be asked concerning the motive. It seems to
me a stran^fe doctrine that the most serious and re-
sponsible of all human acts imposes no obligation
on those who do it of showing that they have a
real grievance ; that those who rebel for the power

22 THE CONTEST IN AMERICA.

of oppressing others, exercise as sacred a right as
those who do the same thing to resist oppression
practised upon themselves. Neither rebellion nor
any other act which affects the interests of others,
is sufficiently legitimated by the mere will to do it.
Secession may be laudable, and so may any other
kind of insurrection ; but it may also be an enor-
mous crime. It is the one or the other, according
to the object and the provocation. And if there
ever was an object which, by its bare announce-
ment, stamped rebels against a particular community
as enemies of mankind, it is the one professed by
the South. Their right to separate is the right
which Cartouche or Turpin would have had to se-
cede from their respective countries, because the
laws of those countries would not suffer them to
rob and murder on the highway. The only real
difference is that the present rebels are more pow-
erful than Cartouche or Turpin, and may possibly
be able to effect their iniquitous purpose.

Suppose, however, for the sake of argument, that
the mere will to separate were in this case, or in
any case, a sufficient ground for separation, I beg
to be informed zvhose will ] The will of any knot
of men who, by fair means or foul, by usurpation,
terrorism, or fraud, have got the reins of govern-
ment into their hands ] If the inmates of Park-
hurst Prison were to get possession of the Isle of
Wight, occupy its military positions, enlist one part
of its inhabitants in their own ranks, set the re-

THE CONTEST IN AMERICA. 28

maiiuler of them to work in chain gangs, and
declare themselves independent, ought their recog-
nition by the British Government to be an immedi-
ate consequence ] Before admitting the authority
of any persons, as organs of the will of the people,
to dispose of the whole political existence of a
country, I ask to see whether their credentials are
from the whole, or only from a part. And first,
it is necessary to ask, Have the slaves been con-
sulted ] Has their will been counted as any part
in the estimate of collective volition ? They are a
part of the population. However natural in the
country itself, it is rather cool in English writers
who talk so glibly of the ten millions (I believe
there are only eight), to pass over the very exis-
tence of four millions who must abhor the idea of
separation. Remember, pje consider them to be
human beings, entitled to human rights. Nor can
it be doubted that the mere f[ict of belonging to a
Union in some parts of which slavery is reprobated,
is some alleviation of their condition, if only as re-
gards future probabilities. But even of the white
population, it is questionable if there was in the
beginning a majority for secession anywhere but in
South Carolina. Though the thing was pre-deter-
mined, and most of the States committed by their
public authorities before the people were called on
to vote ; though in taking the votes terrorism in
many places reigned triumphant ; yet even so, in
several of the States, secession was carried only by

g4 THE CONTEST IN AMERICA.

narrow majorities. In some the authorities have
not dared to pubhsh the numbers ; in some it is
asserted that no vote has ever been taken. Further
(as was pointed out in an admirable letter by Mr.
Carey), the Slave States are intersected in the mid-
dle, from their northern frontier almost to the Gulf
of Mexico, by a country of free labor — the moun-
tain region of the Alleghanies and their depen-
dencies, forming parts of Virginia, North Carolina,
Tennessee, Georgia, and Alabama, in which, from
the nature of the climate and of the agricultural
and mining industry, slavery to any material extent
never did, and never will, exist. This mountain
zone is peopled by ardent friends of the Union.
Could the Union abandon them, without even an
effort, to be dealt with at the pleasure of an exas-
perated slave-owning oligarchy ] Could it abandon
the Germans who, in Western Texas, have made
so meritorious a commencement of growing cotton
on the borders of the Mexican Gulf by free labor ]
Were the right of the slave-owners to secede ever
so clear, they have no right to carry these with
them ; unless allegiance is a mere question of local
proximity, and my next neighbor, if I am a strong-
er man, can be compelled to follow me in any law-
less vagaries I choose to indulge.

But (it is said) the North will never succeed in
conquering the South ; and since the separation
must in the end be recognized, it is better to do at
first what must be done at last ; moreover, if it did

THE CONTEST IN AMERICA. 25

conquer them, it conlcl not govern them when con-
quered, consistently with free institutions. With
no one of these propositions can I agree.

Whether or not the Northern Americans 2vill
succeed in reconquering the South, I do not affect
to foresee. That they can conquer it, if their pre-
sent determination holds, I have never entertained
a doubt ; for they are twice as numerous, and ten
or twelve times as rich. Not by taking military
possession of their country, or marching an army
through it, but by wearing them out, exhausting
their resources, depriving them of the comforts of
life, encouraging their slaves to desert, and exclud-
ing them from communication with foreign coun-
tries. All this, of course, depends on the supposi-
tion that the North does not give in first. Whether
they will persevere to this point, or whether their
spirit, their patience, and the sacrifices they are
willing to make, will be exhausted before reaching
it, I cannot tell. They may, in the end, be wearied
into recognizing the separation. But to those who
say that because this may have to be done at last,
it ought to have been done at first, I put the very
serious question — On what terms ] Have they
ever considered what would have been the mean-
ing of separation if it had been assented to by the
Northern States when first demanded ] People
talk as if separation meant nothing more than the
independence of the seceding States. To have ac-
cepted it under that limitation would have been, on

2Q THE CONTEST IN AMERICA.

the part of the South, to give up that which they
have seceded expressly to preserve. Separation,
with them, means at least half the Territories ; in-
cluding the Mexican border, and the consequent
power of invading and overrunning Spanish America
for the purpose of planting there the " peculiar in-
stitution" which even Mexican civilization has found
too bad to be endured. There is no knowing to
what point of degradation a country may be driven
in a desperate state of its affairs ; but if the North
ever, unless on the brink of actual ruin, makes
peace with the South, giving up the original cause
of quarrel, the freedom of the Territories ; if it re-
signs to them when out of the Union that power of
evil which it would not grant to retain them in the
Union — it will incur the pity and disdain of pos-
terity. And no one can suppose that the South
would have consented, or in their present temper
ever will consent, to an accommodation on any other
terms. It will require a succession of humiliation
to bring them to that. The necessity of reconciling
themselves to the confinement of slavery within its
existing boundaries, with the natural consequence,
immediate mitigation of slavery, and ultimate eman-
cipation, is a lesson which they are in no mood to
learn from anything but disaster. Two or three
defeats in the field, breaking their military strength,
though not followed by an invasion of their terri-
tory, may possibly teach it to them. If so, there
is no breach of charity in hoping that this severe

THE CONTEST IN AMERICA. (^

schooling- may promptly come. When men set
themselves up, in defiance of the rest of the world,
to do the devil's work, no good can come of them
until the world has made them feel that this work
cannot be suffered to be done any longer. If this
knowledge does not come to them for several years,
the abolition question will by that time have settled
itself. For assuredly Congress will very soon make
up its mind to declare all slaves free who belong to
persons in arms against the Union. When that is
done, slavery, confined to a minority, will soon cure
itself; and the pecuniary value of the negroes be-
longing to loyal masters will probably not exceed
the amount of compensation which the United States
will be willing and able to give.

The assumed difficulty of governing the Southern
States as free and equal commonwealths, in case of
their return to the Union, is purely imaginary. If
brought back by force, and not by voluntary com-
pact, they will return without the Territories, and
without a Fugitive Slave Law. It may be assumed
that in that event the victorious party would make
the alterations in the Federal Constitution which
are necessary to adapt it to the new circumstances,
and which would not infringe, but strengthen, its
democratic principles. An article would have to be
inserted prohibiting the extension of slavery to the
Territories, or the admission into the Union of any
new Slave State. Without any other guarantee, the
rapid formation of new Free States would ensure

2S THE CONTEST IN AMERICA.

to freedom a decisive and constantly increasing-
majority in Congress. It would also be right to
abrogate that bad provision of the Constitution (a
necessary compromise at the time of its first estab-
lishment) whereby the slaves, though reckoned as
citizens in no other respect, are counted, to the ex-
tent of three fifths of their number, in the estimate
of the population for fixing the number of repre-
sentatives of each State in the Lower House of
Congress. Why should the masters have members
in right of their human chattels, any more than of
their oxen and pigs ^ The President, in his Mes-
sage, has already proposed that this salutary reform
should be effected in the case of Maryland, addi-
tional territory, detached from Virginia, being given
to that State as an equivalent : thus clearly indicat-
ing the policy which he approves, and which he is
probably willing to make universal.

As it is necessary to be prepared for all possibili-
ties, let us now contemplate another. Let us sup-
pose the worst possible issue of this war — the one
apparently desired by those English writers whose
moral feeling is so philosophically indifferent be-
tween the apostles of slavery and its enemies. Sup-
pose that the North should stoop to recognize the
new Confederation on its own terms, leaving it half
the Territories, and that it is acknowledged by Eu-
rope, and takes its place as an admitted member of
the community of nations^ It will be desirable to
take thought beforehand what are to be our own

THE CONTEST IN AMERICA.

29

future relations with a new Power, professing- the
principles of Attila and Genghis Khan as the foun-
dation of its Constitution. Are we to see with in-
difference its victorious army let loose to propagate
their national faith at the rifle's mouth throus^h
Mexico and Central America? Shall we suhniit to
see fire and sword carried over Cuba and Porto
Rico, and Hayti and Liberia conquered and brt>ught
back to slavery ] We shall soon have causes
enough of quarrel on our own account. When we
are in the act of sending an expedition against
Mexico to redress the wrongs of private British
subjects, we should do well to reflect in time that
the President of the new Republic, Mr. Jefferson
Davis, was the original inventor of repudiation.
Mississippi was the first State which repudiated,
Mr. Jefferson Davis was Governor of Mississippi,
and the Legislature of Mississippi had passed a
Bill recognizing and providing for the debt, which
Bill Mr. Jefferson Davis vetoed. Unless we aban-
don the principles we have for two generations con-
sistently professed and acted on, we should be at
w^ar with the new Confederacy within five years
about the African slave-trade. An EnoHsh Gov-
ernment will hardly be base enough to recognize
them, unless they accept all the treaties by which
America is at present bound ; nor, it may be hoped,
even if de facto independent, would they be admit-
ted to the courtesies of diplomatic intercourse, un-
less they granted in the most explicit manner the

30 THE CONTEST IN AMERICA.

riglit of search. To allow the slave-ships of a
Confederation formed for the extension of slavery
to come and go free, and unexamined, between
America and the African coast, would be to re-
nounce even the pretence of attempting to protect
Africa against the man-stealer, and abandon that
Continent to the horrors, on a far larger scale,
which were practised before Granville Sharp and
Clarkson were in existence. But even if the right
of intercepting their slavers were acknowledged by
treaty, which it never would be, the arrogance of
the Southern slave-holders would not long submit to
its exercise. Their pride and self-conceit, swelled
to an inordinate height by their successful struggle,
would defy the power of England as they had al-
ready successfully defied that of their Northern
countrymen. After our people by their cold disap-
probation, and our press by its invective, had com-
bined with their own difficulties to damp the spirit
of the Free States, and drive them to submit and
make peace, we should have to fight the Slave
States ourselves at far greater disadvantages, when
we shoukl no longer have the wearied and exhaust-
ed North for an ally. The time might come when
the barbarous and barbarizing Power, which we by
our moral support had helped into existence, would
require a general crusade of civilized Europe, to
extinguish the mischief which it had allowed, and
we had aided, to rise up in the midst of our civi-
lization.

THE CONTEST IN AMERICA. g\

For these reasons I cannot join with those who
cry Peace, peace. I cannot wish that this war
should not have heen engaged in by the North, or
that being engaged in, it should be terminated on
any conditions but such as would retain the whole
of the Territories as free soil. I am not blind to
the possibility that it may require a long war to
lowTr the arrogance and tame the aggressive ambi-
tion of the slave-owners, to the point of either re-
turning to the Union, or consenting to remain out
of it with their present limits. But war, in a good
cause, is not the greatest evil which a nation can
suffer. War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest
of things : the decayed and degraded state of moral
and patriotic feeling which thinks nothing tvorth a
war, is worse. When a people are used as mere
human instruments for firing cannon or thrusting
bayonets, in the service and for the selfish purposes
of a master, such war degrades a people. A war
to protect other human beings against tyrannical in-
justice ; a war to give victory to their own ideas of
right and good, and which is their own war, carried
on for an Ijonest purpose by their free choice — is
often the means of their regeneration. A man who
has nothing which he is willing to fight for, nothing
which he cares more about than he does about his
personal safety, is a miserable creature, who has no
chance of being free, unless made and kept so by
the exertions of better men than himself. As long
as justice and injustice have not terminated tJiei)^

3£ THE CONTEST IN AMERICA.

ever renewing" fight for ascendancy in the affairs of
mankind, human beings must be willing, when need
is, to do battle for the one against the other. I am
far from saying that the present struggle, on the
part of the Northern Americans, is wholly of this
exalted character ; that it has arrived at the stage
of being altogether a war for justice, a war of prin-
ciple. But there was from the beginning, and now
is, a large infusion of that element in it ; and this
is increasing, will increase, and if the war lasts,
will in the end predominate. Should that time
come, not only will the greatest enormity which still
exists among mankind as an institution, receive far
earlier its coup de grace than there has ever, until
now, appeared any probability of; but in effecting
this the Free States will have raised themselves to
that elevated position in the scale of morality and
dignity, which is derived from great sacrifices con-
sciously made in a virtuous cause, and the sense of
an inestimable benefit to all future ages, brought
about by their own voluntary efforts.

THE END.

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